BMWGSBYOB III,
June 3-5, 2005
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
BMWGSBYOB III,
June 3-5, 2005
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
|
|
||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
BMWGSBYOB III: Wild and Wonderful. |
|
|
|
 The first sentence
of M. Scott Peck’s The Road Less Traveled is, “Life is difficult. Rick
Gzesh, Dan Weaver and I rode to the BMWGSBYOB III sponsored by
Adventure Rider (advrider.com), where we navigated roads less traveled,
rarely traveled, long forgotten roads, neglected roads with foot peg
deep ruts filled with muddy water, interrupted by streams and menacing
rock formations and a few roads that shouldn’t be qualify as roads at
all, at least not in a first world country. The experience was both
difficult and the most fun I can remember having in a long time. I’m
hooked on GS-ing.Dan and I arrived at Boyer Station Campground, just south of Bartow, WV, late on Friday night with just a few minutes of daylight left to set up camp. We paid our camping fees of $4 a night and joined Rick and the other revelers at the pavilion. The first thing I noticed was that most of the folks there had nametags displaying their advrider.com Internet handles only. Some of those especially known for their frequent, sometimes raunchy posts enjoyed minor celebrity status. Amongst the hooting and hollering, I found myself seated across from a quiet man with a faint smile whose printed nametag read “Vincent_4466” with “Norm” scribbled in handwriting, I had come to learn that Norm is a native of Western PA, and a former 4-Winds member. He has traveled to many distant corners of the world, but he is an expert regarding the unpaved roads of Pocahontas County, WV. Norm agreed to be our ride leader on Saturday. That’s when the adventure began. Norm rode a KTM Adventure 640, which is a very capable dirt bike with lights, as opposed to our GS bikes, which are touring bikes with some off-road modifications. Norm was patient enough to hold back as we lumbered behind him on our rubber cows. It was obvious he could crack the throttle and take off like a scared cat if he wanted to.  I took to off-road
riding pretty quickly on my R100GS. Apparently, I
hadn’t completely forgotten the skills I had acquired more than 30
years ago as a teenager riding single track trails on my Honda SL100.
After a few nervous miles fishtailing thorough gravel and mud, I found
my groove and managed to stay very close behind the lighter, more agile
KTM 640. I was amazed to learn that all of these so-called roads were county roads that actually appear on some highly detailed local maps. Some of the roads had funny names like Turkey Bone Road, or Hacker Valley Road, but some the roads were not marked at all and were nothing more than Jeep passable dirt trails. On some especially technical sections, it was not unusual to bounce over large rocky sections, fishtail thorough mud and cross over a creek bed all in the space of a few hundred feet. Everything about this kind of riding is counterintuitive. You are told to kept your arms loose on the bars, but when you are crossing a wide creek bed and your front tire is skittering on algae covered stones and you feel like you are riding on a road paved with fish, you instinctively tense up and have to constantly remind yourself to stay loose. The old advice, “look up, stay up, look down, go down,” doesn’t quite work in the off-road world. I found that glancing down just long enough to see the hazards coming beneath me and forcing myself to look up again worked for me. You have to train yourself to be alert, yet relaxed, to think without thinking too much and to react without overreacting. I called it “finding my groove.” On one occasion, my glaze lingered downward too long, I lost my groove and I slid off the trail. Suddenly, my bike was resting on its side with the right cylinder nestled in the mud and leaves with Bings leaking gas from the float bowls. Rick ran over to help. Together we righted 465lbs of Germany’s finest and we were back on our way.  Dan Weaver and Big
Yellow went down twice; once where his bike was
completely on its side resting squarely on its Jesse pannier with the
rear wheel about a foot off the ground. Norm, Dan and Rick struggled
together to lift the 550lb yellow monster upright, a task made more
challenging by poor footing in knee-deep mud. Ranger Rick had difficulty finding his groove on the technical sections. His R80 G/S took a dirt nap 4 times during the course of the day. Rick insisted on a more specific method of tally where a get-off is defined as the rider being physically separated from the machine and/or one or more tires are in the air. A drop is has happened when the rider is still straddling a bike that is lying on its side. By this method, Ranger Rick had two get-offs, two drops and a broken wrist. Dan Weaver had two get offs and complained of sore wrists while I had a full drop, followed by a ½ get-off and a bruised ego. Our ride leader Norm had no drops, get-offs or injuries. Rick solicited feedback from of some bystanders to help fine-tune his scoring method. “If the bike is laying on its side, but you are still straddling it, does that count as going down? Or do you have to be thrown completely off the bike, because I was only thrown completely off the bike twice.” He awaited our decisions as he nursed his broken wrist with a bag of ice. It was unanimously agreed that speed and ensuing drama aside, if you have to lift the bike to get it upright, it is down, plain and simple. We’re not scoring an ice skating event here. Keep it simple; down is down. Saturday evening after dinner, a few hundred male egos suffering from adrenaline withdrawal began sharing their tales of triumph and tragedy. There was a man (I’ll call him Jack,) who lost his wife in a tragic car accident several years ago and decided to go on a long ride to clear his head. It’s been four years now and Jack is still riding from town to town and can’t find his way home. There was Kevin who crashed his Suzuki GS850 on the first day of the rally. He had recently bought himself a nice, older Suzuki, and in spite of his wife’s adamant objection; he decided to attend the BMWGSBYOB III event (with the wrong kind of GS). With boundless enthusiasm, few skills and no experience, Kevin tried to hang with the big dogs and the unfortunate result was predictable. Hapless Kevin lost control of his bike on a turn, taking a slide and fortunately, suffering only some minor abrasion injuries. Nonetheless, there was an outpouring of sympathy for him, as we imagined him hobbling home on his broken motorcycle, his dreams of world travel abruptly dashed, only to have to admit to his longsuffering wife that she was right all along  Enjoying his own 15 minutes of minor celebrity status for
chucking
everything to hit the road was Vance the former pharmaceutical
salesman. Vance was being pitched with countless unsolicited offers of
hospitality from near strangers who had nice homes with hot meals, cold
beer and overstuff sofas to sleep on. Why would someone offer to open
his home to a complete stranger? Consider that traveling the world is overwhelmingly the #1 fantasy of the adult American male (women, insert your wisecrack here). Naturally, there are many obstacles that stop us from making the first mile of the journey. Most ominously, there is the lack of money, an unsupportive spouse or other insurmountable family obligations. Even if none of these major hurdles exist, there is loneliness, homesickness, tedium and general fear of the unknown that keeps the rest of us at home. The vast majority of us are unable or unwilling to make the steep sacrifices that the long-term adventure rider must make, so when we chance to encounter a true world traveler, it only seems natural to offer to share our homes and the contents of our refrigerators with someone we can live vicarious thorough, if only for a few hours. Of course the successful adventure traveler has a budget and is fiercely independent and does not live by the kindness of strangers Upon arriving home from the BMWGSBYOB III, my wife greeted me with a long, warm embrace. I regaled her with recent stories from the road while I soaked the pain out of my muscles in a tub of hot water and anticipated a restful night in a nice warm bed. I thought how the warmth, comfort and contentment of my happy home seems so much better after the rigors of a rally weekend, which forces me to ponder the limits of my own adventurous spirit. |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
| Contact Mitch Kehn | |||||
|
|
|||||
